


With Quiet Courage

by Elise_Davidson



Series: 40 Snapshots [16]
Category: Star Trek: Enterprise
Genre: 31. Quiet, 40 Snapshots, Bolian Freighter, M/M, Mild Self-Loathing, Mild speciesism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-23
Updated: 2016-08-23
Packaged: 2018-08-10 12:30:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7845013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elise_Davidson/pseuds/Elise_Davidson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Archer and Shran are stuck inside the bowels of a Bolian freighter.</p><p>While not terribly happy about it, Archer points out the need for quiet.</p><p>Shran probes quite a bit deeper.</p>
            </blockquote>





	With Quiet Courage

**Author's Note:**

> Urgh, still wanted to post this while working on another longer Young/Rush fic. Kinda stupid, seeing as the Young/Rush fic was still for the same prompt.
> 
> In the mean time, the title of this fic was inspired by an orchestra song called "With Quiet Courage" by Larry Daehn.
> 
> Edited: 8/24/2016 for clarity and to fix a few mistakes with continuity.

  1. Quiet



 

“Keep your voice down; are you insane?” Archer snapped, head tilted to the footsteps above the access tube they hid in.

Shran rolled his eyes, though it translated more to his antennae than anything else.  “Better hearing than you, pinkskin.  Besides, Bolians are a notoriously submissive species.  I’m surprised you don’t have several already begging to be in Starfleet.”

“If they’re so submissive, then why didn’t we just ask or pay for passage on their freighter?  Why cram us both in here?  Fuck, the access junction tubes are bigger than this on Enterprise.”

Shran rolled his eyes.  “Yes, Captain…but they’re _so_ submissive that they wouldn’t be likely to hide the fact that they’ve two alien stowaways on their ship should they know we’re here, such as would happen if we had paid for passage or simply asked.”

Archer looked uncomfortable and frustrated.  “For fuck’s sake,” he muttered, rolling his shoulders in the cramped tube.  They were pressed tightly against each other, shoulder to hip to knee, curled against the side in near fetal position.  “So again, I ask—would you _lower your goddamn voice_?”

“You make it sound like this is _my_ fault, pinkskin,” Shran grumbled.  “As I recall, we’re _both_ wanted by the Syndicate.  It’s not as if I knew that Rigel X was so firmly embedded under the Orions’ control.  And it’s certainly not exactly _my_ fault that the obstinate female of the ship we were detained on wanted to keep her filthy green hands on us as long as possible to ensure she would get the reward.”

Archer glared at him.  “ _You_ were the reason we were there in the first place!  Why, exactly, didn't your own government go to bat and rescue this supposed Syndicate operative?”

“As if we would admit we had our hands in that mess at all,” Shran drawled as he seemed to hunker down in acceptance of their situation.  “You saw how they reacted to the incident at that monastery.”

“You mean P’Jem?”

It was now Shran’s turn to tilt a heated gaze.  “You know we don’t call it that, _pinkskin_.”

His voice was inflected with a sort of disgusted insult, as if he were speaking about the filth scrubbed from a waste processing unit.

Archer sighed, wondering if he would ever find his way when navigating Andorian and Vulcan politics.  He was pretty sure at this point that he never would be proficient at it.  “You know I didn’t mean any offense by it.”

“It doesn’t mean the offense wasn’t taken.”

Archer banged his head against the wall, the sound vibrating along Shran’s neck.  “Would you stop already?  We’re on the run from the goddamn _Orion Syndicate_ —which, by the way, I barely even knew _existed_ , let alone that they had a goddamn _bounty_ on me—and you want to debate the semantics over some Vulcan listening post that I gave your government the evidence for while still taking offense to the fact that I didn’t know the Andorian name for it despite the fact you’ve _never said it to me_.”  He scrunched his hands into his hair, wild and a bit overgrown from the month the Syndicate had kept them detained.    “Just…just fucking _stop_ , Shran.”  He curled forward, bending his neck and settling his head onto his knees.

Shran’s antennae drooped in apology, but Archer didn’t see it.  It would have been obvious enough to another Andorian that he was genuinely apologetic, but of fucking _course_ Archer had to be a damn pinkskin.  “Does it help if I tell you the Bolians, comparative to Terran hearing, are practically half-deaf?”

Archer looked up at that and noted the slightly sagging quality of the appendages on Shran’s head.

“Also,” Shran went on in a condescending, reluctant tone, “I have excellent hearing.”  His right antenna moved in what looked like an intentional jerking motion.  “We’ll be fine here, Archer.  I caught their manifest; we’ll be on Soklak in two days; it’s a Vulcan trading outpost.  Far enough that the Syndicate will not look for us the moment we step off the ship.”

Archer sighed tiredly and rubbed at his brows.  A phaser was in one hand, with the safety switched on, and Shran reached up to take it from him.

“I’ll also point out that while Andorians _do_ have different sleep requirements, we have both been awake for nearly three days.”

Archer snorted.  “There’s no way I’ll be able to fall asleep here.”  He tilted a slightly humored look.  “Seriously—are you insane?”

“What else would you like to do?  Trade childhood stories?”  Shran scoffed to himself more than anything, but Archer looked slightly hurt, and he wasn’t sure he cared for that look too much.  “I’m sure they were too different, really.  No offense.”

Archer shook his head and leaned it forward again to his knees.  “If I could have my phaser back?”

The tone was shut down to further conversation other than “yes, here’s your phaser”.  Shran placed it into Archer’s fingers, a long sigh falling from him as his fingertips grazed Archer’s palm to drop the weapon there.  The skin was hot and overheated, and Shran suspected much of Archer’s moodiness came from the inability to cool down.

Shran wasn’t exactly comfortable himself, but his blood ran cooler.  In fact, his skin temperature was more than likely still lower than the flushed, hot flesh he could see beside of him.  With a resigned breath, he maneuvered his arm until his hand could fall onto the nape of Archer’s neck.

_Fuck, his skin was like fire._

But Archer sighed like it was the best thing in the world, and didn’t _that_ do interesting things to Shran’s chest.  He let his fingertips drift first into the sweaty, dirty hair, and then below the collar of the stained shirt Archer wore.  The flesh was hot and just as flushed and damp as the rest of what Shran could see.

“I didn’t know your skin was colder,” Archer said quietly, the sound muffled by his knees.

Shran hummed a confirmation.  “There’s a great deal many things you don’t know about Andorians, I suspect.”

There was a long moment of silence before Archer asked so quietly that Shran wasn’t sure he heard him, let alone correctly.  “I bet there’s something about me you didn’t know.”

Shran’s fingers swept over the broad, muscled slope of Archer’s neck and shoulder.  “Oh?”

Archer’s voice got quieter, and his head fell further down into the bones of his kneecaps.  It was almost…weary, Shran thought, the way the man moved, as if defeated and determined at the same time.  “I like it when you touch my skin.”

Shran’s fingers skipped over hot skin, pink and sweaty with the lack of ventilation.  While he didn’t consider himself necessarily an excellent reader on a person, he did consider himself somewhat of an Andorian interpreter for Archer.  If nothing else, he knew he could count on his gut instinct when trying to figure out what Archer actually meant.

The quiet, whispered admission was something Archer _hated_ , Shran could definitively say that much—there was too much shame, insecurity… _self-hating_ in his voice and stature for Shran to think otherwise.  There was also the hunched, curled-into-himself way that Archer held his frame, as if he couldn’t bear to have let the words out at all.

Shran sighed, and let his fingers settle firmer into the hot skin.  “You know nothing about Andorians, do you?”

Archer seemed irritated; his muscles tensed.  “I don’t know what that means.”  His head still didn’t rise from his knees, which Shran assumed must be _very_ interesting at this point.

That, or Archer didn’t want to make eye contact, and Shran detested that above everything else.

“What that means is that Andorian marriages are comprised of four genders.  They do not happen without it.”  He paused in an uncharacteristic hesitance before sliding his arm across Archer’s shoulders to pull the man closer.  He felt the immediate tension, the succinct body language of “ _get away; this is wrong_ ” written in the lines of his body.

Also in the deepest parts of Archer’s bones was the minute way he leaned closer to Shran, the rebellious angle of his shoulders jutting up against Shran’s arms, and, lastly, the way Archer nearly gave up those feelings completely as Shran’s fingers grasped at his shoulder.

“Your Starfleet has antiquated ideals it seems,” Shran said with regret.

Archer shook his head; the action had his face pressing hot and wet into the chill of Shran’s neck and shoulder.  “Not Starfleet.  Others.”

Shran didn’t ask any further, raising his hand to run a few fingers through Archer’s hair.  Their knees were jumbled together; the positioning was hardly comfortable.  Shran still tugged lightly on Archer’s hair so he could look the man in the eye.  Hazel eyes met his own dark ones, pinked skin contrasting against sky-colored tones.

By Andorian standards, the antenna he sifted through Archer’s burnished hair was demure, but Archer trembled.

“A piece of advice, from one alien to another,” Shran’s lips quirked at his own joke, “Forget standard procedure and realize that _others_ are different than the ones you know now.”  He dragged a torturous thumb over Archer’s high, reddish cheekbone.  “I _like_ touching you, Archer.”

Archer’s hot breath shuddered against his palm, and his eyes cast downward again.  “I _can’t_ , Shran; I _can’t_ —“ Fingers shyly tapped around Shran’s left antenna and quickly left again, and Shran had it in an instant.

Shran recoiled quickly with the realization.  “It’s because I’m not _Terran_ , isn’t it?  Because I’m not even _close_ to resembling your species?”

Archer buried his face into his knees again.  “I’ve already been spoken to about it.  Likely after this, they’ll assign you a liaison officer for any further needs, and they’ll have to be requested through your government.”

The final piece of the puzzle jumbled into place, and the picture it completed was chaos.

Shran’s arm tightened, pulling Archer to him near-desperately now.  “So this is…final, this is all we get.”  It wasn’t a question.

Archer nodded stiffly.  “It’s what I’ve been ordered to do.”

Shran looked up to the ceiling, antennae feeling for vibrations and ears listening further for foot-falls.  “I don’t accept that.  Why should you?”

Archer glared at him mutinously.  “I’m Starfleet; don’t you get it?”

“Are you Starfleet?  Or are you your own person that serves in their name?” Shran shot back just as viciously.

There was too much quiet after that, but they didn’t move from their position.  Archer remained buried in his knees; Shran wasn’t sure he had the strength to force him to accept a more open-minded stance.

***        ***        ***

Archer woke to Shran sitting in his lap, looking furious and obstinate.  His antennae lay back fiercely and tightly kept, but they still twitched.  His eyes were dark and uncompromising, pierced directly into Archer’s.

“What—“ Archer started.

Shran cut him off.  “I will _not_ let your _Starfleet_ dictate who I’m allowed to be with,” he whispered harshly.  His face was bare inches from his own, so close that the force of his words were breath against his lips, and he inched back out of sheer reflex.

"I  _told_ you; it's not  _Starfleet_ ; they actually  _encourage_ this sort of—"

That seemed to make Shran angrier though, and his hands dug sharply into Archer’s hair, twisting the strands between his blue fingers and cutting him off.  “ _No_ , you don’t get to do that, not _here_ , not when we’re both on the run from the Syndicate, not when we _both_ —“ He stopped to take a sharp breath, as if trying to gather his thoughts.  "I don't care whether it was Starfleet, your father, or your last girlfriend; they don't get any say in what we do in our personal lives."

Archer swallowed hard, abruptly realizing that Shran felt the same way he did.  It was weak, when he finally spoke, his voice breaking in the harsh darkness of the access tube.  “Shran…we _can’t_ …”

Shran glared at him, and parsed a word out that seemed to be part of vulgar Terran slang.  “Like _fuck_ we can’t.”

And then there was a chilly, blue-skinned hand groping at his dick, and Archer hissed as his hips raised to the feel in the small space of the tube.  “Shran, _stop_ —“ His voice was gone when Shran kissed him.

Shran’s lips were cold on his own, icy tongue mapping his mouth, blue fingers and antennae both drifting into the bronzed strands of his brown hair.

“I don’t _want_ to stop,” Shran murmured into his ear before biting the lobe.

Archer’s hips thrust up again, feeling that Shran was in a similar state of arousal.  “At least wait until we’re off this ship; is that too much to ask?” he inquired in irritation.

“Are you still going to let us do this?” Shran responded, and jerked at Archer’s hair when the hazel eyes started to lose contact.  He twisted and yanked until Archer was nose-to-nose with him.  “Are you?” he demanded.

Archer’s voice was reedy and lined with need.  “Yes,” he gasped out.

Shran responded by placing a surprisingly sweet kiss on Archer’s forehead, his left antenna pulling on Archer’s scalp.  “ _Good_.”  He licked against Archer’s lips, hand still groping the cock beneath him and sighing breathily when Archer’s hands _finally_ gave in and started to explore.  “Now, keep in mind, Archer…Bolians are healf-deaf, not all the way.”

Archer smiled at him, his hazel eyes glittering more green than brown or blue.  “So we’ll have to be quiet.”

Shran smirked at him before thrusting his hips down in a way that he had learned from an Orion girl, if he remembered right—maybe it had been a Romulan stripper who had learned it from an Orion girl?  It had the desired effect—Archer’s eyes went dark and dilated.  “Quiet, yes.”

Archer wrapped his arms around Shran’s waist tightly, his eyes dampened with arousal and his skin just as hot and flushed as it had been before, though now, it was for different reasons.  His mouth went to the blue of Shran’s neck, quietly sucking and nibbling along the alien bones.  One hand stripped up his back to take hold of his shoulder.

Shran let a hushed moan breathe over Archer’s ear.  “ _Vrak’lahni_ ,” he gasped into Archer’s lips.

Archer pulled back, confusion clear in his frame and his face.  “What does that mean?”

“It means I want to fuck you,” Shran said clearly, eyes intent and hips thrusting downward.  “Surely you Terrans have terms of endearment?”

Archer’s eyes squeezed shut and he jerked up into Shran’s pelvis.  “None that imply so much.  None that apply in the way you’re asking.”

Shran drifted his fingers beneath Archer’s tunic, the tips grazing across skin.  He kissed Archer deeply again, tongue playing across the seam of his lips.  “You know nothing about Andorians.”

Archer tilted his head back, panting slightly and looking at Shran with sheer defiance.  “Then show me.”  He brushed his lips against Shran’s, though the gesture was slightly shy.  “Show me _everything_.”

Shran let his weight settle fully onto Archer’s hips, fingers gesturing over Archer’s facial features that were entirely more Terran than Andorian, and, if the way Archer’s head leaned into the touch was any indication, Archer _knew_ it.

With a smile that was more teeth, seduction, and arousal than anything else, Shran bit Archer’s bottom lip.  “Be silent and _learn_ then, Archer.”

Archer’s eyes were green and glittered like Andorian ice.

XXXXXXX

**Author's Note:**

> So...it wasn't the next day, but it got edited ^^;


End file.
